How to protect confidential information

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Secure communication via e-mail & chat

“I have nothing to hide, so confidential information and its protection are not an issue for me”?

Sure, the GDPR protects all personal data anyway.
But there is a lot of information that you don’t necessarily want to find on social media or with your competitor.

Confidential information electronically?

That’s almost a contradiction in terms. After all, PCs, laptops, smartphones and cloud storage are perfect targets when it comes to getting hold of confidential information.

The devices themselves are constantly on the move with their owners. Theft or tampering is therefore quite easy.
Good hackers and data forensics experts find information on devices that users didn’t even know existed. And crack passwords. And recover documents and messages that were thought to have been deleted long ago.

Dangers also lurk online: Spyware and malware, access via unprotected wi-fi, interception of unencrypted mail, etc.

Secure e-communication

Of course, it is important to have up-to-date anti-virus programs and use encrypted wireless networks.

But also make absolutely sure that confidential information is sent exclusively with end-to-end encryption.
There are already very good solutions for this on the market for all common e-mail programs, for every purpose and budget: e.g. Azure, or gpg4o.

It is more difficult with smartphones. Here the rule is: No sensitive messages and mails via unencrypted networks!
Word has probably already spread that short messages via WhatsApp are not exactly secure anyway. A very good alternative is Signal.

Protect the content!

Even with all the precautions taken for the electronic transfer of data, the content itself usually remains unprotected. So if confidential information does fall into the wrong hands, it will be readable by anyone as unprotected text in mail, chat or PDF.

Additional encryption and protection for confidential information is provided e.g. by the Tresorit system, but this is primarily for corporate communications management.

SpeechCode – the e-safe for confidential information

A quick and easy alternative that also works on a smartphone is SpeechCode.

Simply type the text into the generator, protect it with an 8-digit PIN and send it as a data code without worrying about network and encryption security.
Once you scan the code and enter the PIN, the text appears on the display. The code can be saved as an image file without worry, as it remains PIN protected.